Important new development in UK planning law: I will be difficult to reject proposals based on participatory charette processes:

-- "Under proposals expected to be included in the bill, local authorities will be required to adopt the outcomes of community workshops as a planning framework unless there is a significant problem with their legality or practicality."

There will be very good reasons for developers to involve communities actively, rather than imposing unpopular projects on them.

The Prince's Foundation is ready to help:

--- "If the localism and decentralisation bill does enhance local planning through stakeholder engagement, the Prince's Foundation would be pleased to help local authorities to respond, by community planning training sessions and by conducting Enquiries by Design."--- Dittmar recently denied promoting any particular style, saying: "Unlike the critical elite, with its allegiance to often vain statement buildings by famous architects, our bias is toward design in service of walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods, linked by streets and squares and landscape".

The design establishment is not pleased. An honest comment from award-winning architect Will Alsop,

--- "This is dangerous," he said. "We already know that the vast majority of people would favour the Prince of Wales's attitudes, but architecture, like all forms of art and science, thrives on the new and asking interesting questions as well as protecting the old. With the Prince's Foundation involved, the new would go out of the window."Alsop confirms that the promotion of "innovative", modernist architecture and urban design has to depend on top-down, undemocratic decision-making processes. For modernist ideologists, the correct style is more important than democracy.

Critics believe bid by prince's charity to play key role in neighbourhood planning system is dangerous and inappropriate

* Robert Booth and Chris Gourlay

* guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 November 2010

The Prince of Wales's charity, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, is aiming to co-ordinate community groups setting the planning vision for local areas. Photograph: Matt Dunham/PA

The Prince of Wales is attempting to extend his influence over Britain's towns and cities by taking a key role in the neighbourhood planning system under changes launched by the government.

The prince's aides have been advising the government on one of David Cameron's "big society" policies aimed at handing people, rather than officials, power over what is built in their neighbourhoods.

The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, a charity of which Charles is president, is lobbying to co-ordinate community groups that would set the planning vision for local areas, including what housing and public facilities should be built and how they should look.

The innovation is expected to be announced in the coming weeks as part of the localism and decentralisation bill and is meant to turn the planning system on its head with the public "collaborating" rather than simply being consulted on official policies.

Planning experts believe the foundation's involvement in steering meetings would mean more neighbourhoods shaped according to the prince's favoured traditional and conservative architectural values, and have warned it could embed his influence in the democratic planning system.

Will Alsop, one of Britain's leading architects, said the bid was dangerous and threatened to stifle architectural innovation, while campaigners opposed to Charles's influence over democratic processes branded it "grossly inappropriate".

The foundation's decision to press for the role comes amid a resurgence in Charles's influence over planning under the Conservatives. Last month his foundation proposed taking over the design review of major planning applications from the government design watchdog, which has had its funding slashed.

The charity has also been drafted in by the Qatari developers of a £3bn housing plan at Chelsea barracks after the developers scrapped the original Richard Rogers design amid fears that Charles's objection might influence the London mayor, Boris Johnson, who has the power to veto major developments in the capital.

The Conservatives are understood to be keen to involve the Prince's Foundation in the planning changes. John Howell, the Conservative MP who originally proposed the new approach to planning in a green paper, said the foundation's method of running community design sessions was "one which had a good track record and people will be interested in learning of its success".

The prince's charity has used its Enquiry by Design workshops to develop housing plans from East Ayrshire to Northamptonshire which have resulted in proposals that reject modern architecture and favour traditional approaches.

Under proposals expected to be included in the bill, local authorities will be required to adopt the outcomes of community workshops as a planning framework unless there is a significant problem with their legality or practicality. The plans would be drawn up at ward, parish or town council level and district and borough councils would be expected to stitch them together. Planning sources claimed the foundation was "gearing up its machine" to seize the opportunity to advance its philosophy."We were asked by [the Department for] Communities and Local Government for input into ways that community engagement could promote more sustainable development, and we have provided information about our Enquiry by Design process, and ways that similar processes could aid local planning," said Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the foundation.

"If the localism and decentralisation bill does enhance local planning through stakeholder engagement, the Prince's Foundation would be pleased to help local authorities to respond, by community planning training sessions and by conducting Enquiries by Design."

Dittmar recently denied promoting any particular style, saying: "Unlike the critical elite, with its allegiance to often vain statement buildings by famous architects, our bias is toward design in service of walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods, linked by streets and squares and landscape."

That has not prevented criticism of the bid for increased influence. "It is grossly inappropriate for the heir to the throne to be involved in an organisation that wants to take such a central role in government business, especially in the controversial area of planning," said Graham Smith, director of Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state. "We know that Charles has deep prejudices on architecture and planning and it would be very worrying to have that influence spread across the country."

Will Alsop, winner of the Stirling Prize for architecture for Peckham library, said the prince's involvement in the often politicised planning system would breach accepted norms about the royal family keeping out of politics and would be "bad news for architecture".

"This is dangerous," he said. "We already know that the vast majority of people would favour the Prince of Wales's attitudes, but architecture, like all forms of art and science, thrives on the new and asking interesting questions as well as protecting the old. With the Prince's Foundation involved, the new would go out of the window."

“Steer clear of tract mansions, ‘the Hummers of real estate.’ They never made much sense, given big heating bills, high property taxes, and large maintenance costs. Now they’re as obsolete as the cars.”

That’s the warning of analyst Jonathan Miller in the 2011 edition of the authoritative “Emerging Trends in Real Estate,” copublished by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute.

Miller’s caution underscores what many analysts are now saying: Housing development at the urban fringe, where foreclosures have been the most ferocious, won’t recommence any time soon. The great American “drive ’til you qualify” phenomenon has come to a screeching halt.

There may be exceptions in especially hot growth regions (whenever those reappear). Ritzy (solidly high-income) suburbs will keep their niche for years to come.

But the catastrophic housing slump triggered by subprime mortgages, false securitization, credit default swaps and now massive foreclosures has destroyed confidence, raised fears of more underwater mortgages, and placed a permanent crimp on the suburban growth machine.

Plus, the slump may be reinforced for years to come by a massive age mismatch among housing sellers and buyers, reports University of Virginia demographer William J. Lucy.

Why? Many suburban homeowners, the cutting edge of the massive baby boom generation aged 55 and up, are reassessing their housing needs. With the kids departed, they wonder about keeping (and heating) their big rec-room, multi-bedroom houses. They have lawns to tend. They’re considering smaller digs. Maybe even a move to town for its more walkable amenities (stores, parks, restaurants, libraries, medical facilities).

The number of people in this 55-and-up group increased nationwide by 8 million from 2000 to 2009. But there’s a problem — Who are they going to sell to? Normally it would be to younger people in the 30-to-45 age group, often interested in yards, rec-rooms and bedrooms for kids. But there’s the rub: There aren’t nearly as many in that younger group; in fact the number of potential homeowners aged 30 to 45 years of age actually went down by 3.6 million from 2000 to 2009. And they’re not having as many kids as their parents, anyway.

“There are simply too many sellers and too few buyers,” says Lucy.

Plus, there’s been a dramatic taste shift. Today’s “millennials,” born between 1977 and 1994, are leaving the nest with radically different tastes from their parents. A high proportion, write Patrick Doherty and Christopher Leinberger in the latest Washington Monthly, “have a taste for vibrant, compact, and walkable communities full of economic, social and recreational opportunities.” Some three-quarters, in polls, say they plan to live in America’s urban cores. Many fewer say they’ll be looking for drivable suburban homes.

Indeed, consumer taste for more convenient locations — in cities or older, more compact suburban neighborhoods — was rising long before the housing market implosion. Significant revival of pre-1940 neighborhoods — usually offering with some employment, shops, entertainment, restaurants and public transit — picked up as a strong trend in the 1990s.

“By 2000,” Lucy notes, “white flight was a distant memory in many parts of cities.” Even in today’s real estate bust, he adds, too few condominiums are for sale in attractive parts of cities and the inner suburbs where demand has increased.

There’s a frequent obstacle: neighbors’ opposition to infill development and the extra density it adds. But neighborhood doubts can often be satisfied by collaborative planning and prospects of quality redevelopment near transit stops, as well as attractive makeovers of obsolete shopping centers and low-grade strip commercial corridors. Plus, downtowns, universities and medical centers are new magnets for quality redevelopment.

Doherty and Leinberger pick up on that theme with a vengeance, arguing that the real estate sector, which triggered the recession, “must get back into the game.” We’ll be “condemned to high unemployment and sluggish growth,” they assert, if the 35 percent of the economy that real estate represents “is not engaged.”

And where’s the opportunity they suggest? You guessed it: to satisfy what both the millennials, and many boomers ready to downsize seem to want — “small one-to-three bedroom homes in walkable, transit-oriented, economically dynamic, and job-rich neighborhoods.”

Meeting that market demand, whether by new construction or expanding/renovating old homes and apartments could, it’s argued, become a prime “economic engine to put our people back to work” without more government debt, without enduring the conservatives’ austerity or paying for more of the liberals’ fiscal stimulus.

And there would be big side benefits: more walking to reduce obesity, reduced carbon emissions to combat climate change, less reliance on oil from countries with terrorist ties, and a less overextended U.S. military.

It all won’t happen automatically. Hardly. We need some revolutions — to fund transit over road expansions, to revoke zoning codes that stop compact development. But in tight, dangerous times, what else? If not now, when ever?